the tone of TED can also be "What If Everything We Know About _____ Is Wrong?" pop iconoclasm, lets turn conventional wisdom upside down stuff. I think that's what it has in common with freaknomics and is what irks people.

Like, something to do with people being smart by proxy? You know the kind, who have a world of facts at their fingertips, but take them away from an internet connection or ask them to develop a thought or bring ideas together for themselves and they fall to pieces.

hey, I feel that way about myself when I go through a lurking phase on ILX, where all I do is read smart people making smart points and feel as if I'm learning something when actually I'm not learning very much at all. It's easier to listen to a TED talk then give one.

ILX is excellent in that it's participatory, though. I'm much more of a consumer than a participator and could get sucked into the world of TED. Here, I can learn things and then type the well-earned "otm" into the text box.

"Summit Series is the anti-Aspen, targeting twentysomething entrepreneurs, 1,000 of whom last year paid $3,500 to spend four days on a cruise to the Bahamas. The event featured glow sticks, condoms, Russell Simmons–led yoga, a shark-tagging excursion with Timothy Ferriss, and talks on philanthrocapitalism by people like Richard Branson and Peter Thiel."

I'm not saying you could have made the world a better place with one well-aimed torpedo... I'm just saying.

Sounds like a pretty crazy time and I bet Richard Branson knows how to party. I'd also like to listen to Peter Thiel on "philanthrocapitalism" and how that relates to his libertarian island nation. Possibly not for too long, though.

There’s one idea, though, that TED’s organizers recently decided was too controversial to spread: the notion that widening income inequality is a bad thing for America, and that as a result, the rich should pay more in taxes.

TED organizers invited a multimillionaire Seattle venture capitalist named Nick Hanauer – the first nonfamily investor in Amazon.com – to give a speech on March 1 at their TED University conference. Inequality was the topic – specifically, Hanauer’s contention that the middle class, and not wealthy innovators like himself, are America’s true “job creators.”

“We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years,” he said. “Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an ecosystemic feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.”

You can’t find that speech online. TED officials told Hanauer initially they were eager to distribute it. “I want to put this talk out into the world!” one of them wrote him in an e-mail in late April. But early this month they changed course, telling Hanauer that his remarks were too “political” and too controversial for posting.

Other TED talks posted online veer sharply into controversial and political territory, including NASA scientist James Hansen comparing climate change to an asteroid barreling toward Earth, and philanthropist Melinda Gates pushing for more access to contraception in the developing world.

TED is there to make you feel great about working within the status quo! Actually going to the thing is relatively exclusive, so why the fuck would they want to spread the idea that exclusive groups are not what's really influential?

I agree with your language about ecosystems, and your dismissal of some of the mechanistic economy orthodoxy, yet many of your own statements seem to go further than those arguments justify

But even if the talk was rated a home run, we couldn't release it, because it would be unquestionably regarded as out and out political. We're in the middle of an election year in the US. Your argument comes down firmly on the side of one party. And you even reference that at the start of the talk. TED is nonpartisan and is fighting a constant battle with TEDx organizers to respect that principle. (This aspect wasn't helped by the news that David was planning to mobilize Move On to distribute the talk. If it wasn't political before, it certainly would have been then.)

idk, unless you are purposefully politically naive, you're going to have an opinion about the whys and hows of income inequality, and will probably reference ways to fix it, and all of the thoughts I'm aware of have inherently partisan viewpoints.

I haven't heard a good conservative-perspective "this is why income inequality is at this level, and this is why (or this is why it's ok)" speech that doesn't completely piss me off! I welcome anyone who can point me to one.

I felt kind of bad that I was mocking TED at my friend who was asked to write a blog post for a local TEDx site. But I can see where he'd appreciate some of it because he's got an architecture background, and holy shit does that TED book sound like some of the crap that architects write.